The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, May 18, 2018

Gaza’s Miseries Have Palestinian Authors - Bret Stephens

by Bret Stephens

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan

There’s a
pattern here — harm yourself, blame the other — and it deserves to be
highlighted amid the torrent of morally blind, historically illiterate
criticism to which Israelis are subjected every time they defend
themselves against violent Palestinian attack.

Palestinians
protesting at the Gaza border on Sunday. The large wooden key the boy
is holding symbolizes the Palestinians’ belief in their right of return.CreditMahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For the third time in two weeks, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have set fire to the Kerem Shalom border crossing,
through which they get medicine, fuel and other humanitarian essentials
from Israel. Soon we’ll surely hear a great deal about the misery of
Gaza. Try not to forget that the authors of that misery are also the
presumptive victims.

There’s a
pattern here — harm yourself, blame the other — and it deserves to be
highlighted amid the torrent of morally blind, historically illiterate
criticism to which Israelis are subjected every time they defend
themselves against violent Palestinian attack.

In
1970, Israel set up an industrial zone along the border with Gaza to
promote economic cooperation and provide Palestinians with jobs. It had
to be shut down in 2004 amid multiple terrorist attacks that left 11 Israelis dead.

In
2005, Jewish-American donors forked over $14 million dollars to pay for
greenhouses that had been used by Israeli settlers until the government
of Ariel Sharon withdrew from the Strip. Palestinians looted dozens of the greenhouses almost immediately upon Israel’s exit.

In
2007, Hamas took control of Gaza in a bloody coup against its rivals in
the Fatah faction. Since then, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist
groups in the Strip have fired nearly 10,000 rockets and mortars from
Gaza into Israel — all the while denouncing an economic “blockade” that
is Israel’s refusal to feed the mouth that bites it. (Egypt and the
Palestinian Authority also participate in the same blockade, to zero
international censure.)

Which
brings us to the grotesque spectacle along Gaza’s border over the past
several weeks, in which thousands of Palestinians have tried to breach
the fence and force their way into Israel, often at the cost of their
lives. What is the ostensible purpose of what Palestinians call “the
Great Return March”?

That’s no mystery. This week, The Times published an op-ed by Ahmed Abu Artema,
one of the organizers of the march. “We are intent on continuing our
struggle until Israel recognizes our right to return to our homes and
land from which we were expelled,” he writes, referring to homes and
land within Israel’s original borders.

His
objection isn’t to the “occupation” as usually defined by Western
liberals, namely Israel’s acquisition of territories following the 1967
Six Day War. It’s to the existence of Israel itself. Sympathize with him
all you like, but at least notice that his politics demand the
elimination of the Jewish state.

Notice,
also, the old pattern at work: Avow and pursue Israel’s destruction,
then plead for pity and aid when your plans lead to ruin.

The
world now demands that Jerusalem account for every bullet fired at the
demonstrators, without offering a single practical alternative for
dealing with the crisis.

Elsewhere
in the world, this sort of behavior would be called reckless
endangerment. It would be condemned as self-destructive, cowardly and
almost bottomlessly cynical.

The mystery of Middle East politics is
why Palestinians have so long been exempted from these ordinary moral
judgments. How do so many so-called progressives now find themselves in
objective sympathy with the murderers, misogynists and homophobes of Hamas? Why don’t they note that, by Hamas’s own admission, some 50 of the 62 protesters killed on Monday were members of Hamas?
Why do they begrudge Israel the right to defend itself behind the very
borders they’ve been clamoring for years for Israelis to get behind?

Why
is nothing expected of Palestinians, and everything forgiven, while
everything is expected of Israelis, and nothing forgiven?

That’s
a question to which one can easily guess the answer. In the meantime,
it’s worth considering the harm Western indulgence has done to
Palestinian aspirations.

No decent Palestinian society can emerge from the culture of victimhood,
violence and fatalism symbolized by these protests. No worthy
Palestinian government can emerge if the international community
continues to indulge the corrupt, anti-Semitic
autocrats of the Palestinian Authority or fails to condemn and sanction
the despotic killers of Hamas. And no Palestinian economy will ever
flourish through repeated acts of self-harm and destructive provocation.

If Palestinians want to build a worthy, proud and prosperous nation,
they could do worse than try to learn from the one next door. That
begins by forswearing forever their attempts to destroy it.

Bret Stephens - follow me on Facebook.Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/opinion/gaza-palestinians-protests.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.